


i say your name (like there could be an us)

by hwrites



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Tessa has a lot of feelings, ice cream makes everything better, soft angst, soft angst with a happy ending, ultimate(ly) HEA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 19:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16817413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hwrites/pseuds/hwrites
Summary: "There’s a saying somewhere, she knows, that she’s always thought was true, about how happiness is a choice. How you can’t choose what happens to you, you can only choose how you react to it.Tessa can’t help but think about how this isn’t one of those times.”





	i say your name (like there could be an us)

There’s a saying somewhere, she knows, that she’s always thought was true, about how happiness is a choice. How you can’t choose what happens to you, you can only choose how you react to it.

Tessa can’t help but think about how this isn’t one of those times.

She’s sitting on the couch in her living room, eating a pint of ice cream while some show that she isn’t paying attention to flashes across the screen. She feels similar to how she did in 2014, post-Sochi: how she felt like she had to act like she and  
Scott were getting along, even though there was a wedge of feelings preventing them from saying what they wanted to. 

When Tessa thinks back to that time in her life, all she remembers is feeling helpless. Every smile, every laugh, was fake, but she didn’t know how get herself out of the funk that she was in.

The parallels between then and now are so, so clear, but she knows that she can’t talk about this with the one person that she wants to.

Scott.

The problem here isn’t that she’s not happy for him, not really. If he has a girlfriend who isn’t her, then, well, fine. There’s nothing she can really do about that.

No, the problem is that Tessa feels like she’s going to be in such a weird position over the next . . . well, who knows how long, really.

It’s weird when you’re in a partnership with someone who suddenly has a girlfriend; it begins, slowly, to not feel like a partnership. Not that it would affect their partnership on the ice, but their partnership off of the ice is what Tessa is worried about. When you’ve known someone as long as she’s known Scott, when you know almost every inch of their body and corner of their mind, it can feel weird when someone else is thrown into the mix.

Scott has always been very private about his personal life, especially with the media. They both have, actually. Having the world think that you should be in a relationship with someone has never been the start of a great love story, unless it’s about the two people that the people think should be together.  
Which, in this case, it is not.

Tessa doesn’t really know why she feels how she does towards Scott having a girlfriend. It’s not like she’s in love with him or anything.

The ice cream sitting on her spoon begins to melt, dripping back into the carton that it’s poised over, but Tessa Virtue doesn’t notice.

She’s too deep in thought, too deep in emotion that she also doesn’t realize that tears are mixing with the chocolate ice cream sitting on her lap until she touches a hand to her cheek and it comes away wet. 

She laughs bitterly, reaches for the carton’s lid and pops it on, before she forces herself to get up to put the ice cream back into the freezer.

Tessa unintentionally stays off of social media in the days following her and Scott’s induction to the Canadian Walk of Fame. 

She doesn’t really know why, probably because she doesn’t want to have to feel like she’s lying to everyone when she doesn’t even know what she’d be lying about.

She just has so many feelings, ones that she doesn’t want to share with the world (or even Scott, and the thought of that cracks her heart open raw as she cries and cries). Not that she’s in love with him – she isn’t broken-hearted over him, as many people have been led to believe.

She supposes that she is just mourning the Scott and Tessa era of their lives, now that it’s Scott, Tessa, and her. The her isn’t meant to be harsh, although in her head it always sounds harsh, because it’s been Scott and Tessa for so long that she hadn’t thought it would change any time soon.

And yet, here she is, crying on a couch for someone she’s lost, but not really.

Because she hasn’t lost Scott; they’re still going to be friends, still going to be partners in every sense of the word except the one that the world most wants them to be. 

Tessa thinks that the real reason she’s crying is because she’s afraid of losing him. 

Afraid that he’ll have a girlfriend, then a wife, then a wife and kids with a nice house somewhere in Ilderton, and she’ll just be Tessa Virtue, one-half of an ice dancing team from the past while Scott will be surrounded by his wife and kids and not her.

She’ll go to sleep alone and wake up alone, only see Scott and his family at Christmas, send him a birthday text or post on Instagram about them, about the memories they made through the 21 years that they skated together. 

That’s the thing about having a partner in a sense that isn’t romantic: someday, you’ll have to let them go.

Marie-France and Patrice were lucky, she thinks, as she tells herself that she isn’t in love with Scott, like it’s her new inner mantra (and maybe it should be). They knew that they would always be together, Tessa thinks. At least it seems like it. She can’t imagine a world where Marie-France and Patch aren’t a couple.

She wonders, for a flash of a second, if people think the same about her and Scott.

And then she pushes that thought out of her head and vows to never, ever think it again.  
(She will, in a few years. But she doesn’t know it yet, won’t know until he shows up at her door in the rain and asks to come in. Tessa will think he’s been dating someone. He hasn’t. Scott doesn’t know why it’s taken him so, so long to realize that it’s been her this whole time. There won’t be anyone else for him.)

Her next Instagram post is a picture of her smiling, but she knows it looks fake. Knows that people are probably seeing right through her.

Maybe they’re even thinking about how she and Scott are acting like it’s suddenly 2014 and they’ve lost the gold to their biggest rivals.

Why does she care what people think of her? She doesn’t.

Well, not really.

She only cares what one person thinks of her, the one person who knows her better than anyone else on the planet.

The one person who she wants but can’t have, although she won’t admit it to herself.

Because it’s always been there, her feelings for Scott. In some way or another, she’s always liked him, but she just won’t admit it, wouldn’t admit it, because of their partnership, which she thinks is simultaneously the most fragile thing and the strongest thing in her life.

She loves him, but she can’t have him, not yet.

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is the first fic I've ever posted, but I've been writing for a long time! the title is from Adele's "Melt My Heart to Stone." hope you enjoy :) (also, any time-inaccuracies are entirely my own.)


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